One of the sports to miss out from the programme list of the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta and Palembang is cricket. Apart from cricket, skateboarding, sambo and surfing are among the other sports which have been removed from the programme in order to reduce the burden on Indonesian organisers.

This measure was taken as a part of the series of changes aimed at reducing the total number of events from 493 to 431. Also omitted from the list are kurash and belt wrestling events. This news was confirmed by the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) to insidethegames.

Meanwhile, there will also be reduced competitions in the sports of ju jitsu, jet ski, sport climbing, paragliding, bridge and wushu.

In an interview to insidethegames, Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) director general Husain Al-Musallam said, “We hope these changes will make the Games more cost effective” and added “We wanted to focus on sports which are popular in Indonesia.”

No changes, however, have yet been made to any of the other 28 permanent Summer Olympic sports due to be contested. This includes those, like handball, which remain low profile in the south-east Asian nation.

“We would like to thank organisers for understanding the OCA point of view and keeping all 28 Olympic sports in the programme, even those less popular in Indonesia,” added Al-Musallam.